Auteur : Christophe Jost

Notes/Domino Tech Volt

VOLT – finding the current, harnessing the flow

by Christophe Jost0 comments

Untold Notes

VOLT Getting the flow

VOLT – finding the current, harnessing the flow

After a couple of weeks working daily a few hours with Domino VOLT, I must say that it is exceeding my expectations. As things stand, I can now see that Domino VOLT will enable us to do what we were envisioning and probably quite some more. The fact that it can integrate seamlessly into a webpage makes it the perfect companion tool to Domino Designer development. We can finally create hybrid apps without a fuss, quickly yet safely and need not another team of specialists to do it.

From the Notes developper perspective, Domino VOLT represents a challenge. Those who have xPages experience will have something of a headstart. But programming with Domino VOLT needs rethinking, or rather looking at the problem and the development from another angle. But once you’ve understood that, you can start producing simple applications in hours not days or weeks.

I decided to stay at a basic level and test features and functions one after the other. No big ambition, just building an app. No time spent on looks. There are people with far better artistic competences then me ;=)

After having created a table for a keyword, which was populated by just creating each, I then moved on to a table of information to import.

You have 2 choices :

– you import, VOLT creates a page and you then edit that page the way you want.

– you create a page,set-up the fields, then import your spreadsheet. In this scenario, you need to put as header the variable name you have used in each field.

I’ve subsequently been able to manipulate the data via agents in the Notes Database.

Adding fields is posisble, but, at least this is what I’ve seen, you need to follow the sequence:

– create the field in the VOLT page

– publish

– then you can run an agent to populate the fields

You can create Notes view and forms to see, sift through the data from the Notes client, no problem.

Changing stages can be done from the Notes client as well.

The power of VOLT becomes apparent when one starts using tables, sections, and workflows.

At this point the sky is the limit – if you know how to integrate that into Notes.

To me, if you stay on VOLT, you can develop simple applications quickly and replace the Excel quagmire that so many businesses face. It is not the tool I would use for large data manipulation however. Simple tasks can be solved without having to live within the confines of a file on a PC, a USB stick, in a Whatsapp feed and the limits of A1:C3 types of addresses.

Excel – or any other spreadsheet is a software that was developped for the PC as in Personal Computer in the late seventies. It’s nothing else but a rehash from Visicalc. Nothing as invented there. Just an idea, a concept made more industrial.

VOLT is something completely different and so much more sustainable. It was conceived as network ready, workflow ready, import ready export ready.

I can see so many use cases with our customers where the move from a spreadsheet to VOLT will have a significant impact.

As for more complex applications, I’d want the integration with Notes more advanced, but from what I understand this is an ongoing process.

And I can imagine the VOLT team will add that big-data capabilities to VOLT.

This will make the pair Notes-VOLT one heck of a platform.

Sametime Tech

What you ought to aware about Skype/Microsoft Teams

by Christophe Jost0 comments

Untold Notes

Privacy and Skype/Microsoft teams…what you should be aware of

I just read an interesting piece in the german press. Basically, the privacy/data protection officer of Berlin city advised schools, businesses and the city’s administration against using many public video-conferencing systems.
It based its decision on recent technical findings what were published in the german press and on analyzing the GDPR situation.
And Microsoft is now flexing its legal muscle. This story will unfold in the coming weeks, months, years I guess.
But what it is all about ? Among all the issues, I am looking at one in particular.

Microsofot’s privacy statement, it is considered by the Stiftung Warentest who compared 20 videoconferencing systems recently, I am quoting :

« The texts (…) show no serious concern with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). « 

Datenschutz bei Microsoft Teams?

Now, one could say that this is just paperwork…but there is much more.

Microsoft is sending User IDs to the Adobe Experience Cloud, Marketo (an Adobe subsidiary), Google Ads and Scorecardresearch.
The data streams look like remarketing tags.
Naturally, cookies are used as well as other means to identify.

Now this means that when a web-conference is started, all members are identified, their web profiles are updated if their devices or identities are known.
Google reserves the right to use that data for other advertising clients.

This ought to get everyone thinking about using such software and is an argument for using Sametime whose functioning is based – and has always been – on confidentiality and security

Tech Volt

Domino VOLT, trying to turn my light ON…. !

by Christophe Jost1 comments

After having tested, tried, read, watched all I could do, find about Domino VOLT, I was starting to feel frustrated.
I’m more a hands-on guide then a reader of instruction manuals. I prefer to reverse-engineer and learn from the example.

Today I realised that these last days I was kind of stuck, and I was convinced I was stuck the same way then when starting to use Notes 2 almost 30 years ago.

I was missing something. Or I was looking at Volt from the wrong angle.
30 years ago, my programming was done in an advanced Basic (Memsoft), with multikey files.
So the coding was sequential.

Starting to develop with Notes, I hit a plateau as I was just not getting the views, forms, etc.
One day, a colleague (thank you Patrick Günter) was able to shine a different light on Notes and that was it.
I had understood and was able so start serious developement.
Today I finally understood I was looking at Volt with my Notes radar and was not using the right wavelenght…
I think I can explain the major difference this way.

In Volt, you have forms and views. And in the application to develop, you may

– open a view
– compose a document

basically that’s it

If you compose a document, and save it, you get a blank screen. You actually don’t see the result in a view like in Notes.

To see that you have to program it. It is not there out of the box.

While you are developping you don’t see any view. You create forms and for each form, there will be a corresponding view to browse through the data, page by page.

From that view you can edit or create new records

Because I had not dataset available in Excel, this part was not visible to me, which explains my unease these days
Now once I had imported a simple table and then deployed my test database, I found out that from the application manager, the ‘Show data’ option opened something akin to the view manager in a notes database, and that the ‘Launch’ option enabled me to create a record – one menu option for each existing form, akin to the Create menu in a notes database.

Now, coming from Notes, the web environment is not at the center of our preocupations. In VOLT it is.

So for each form, you get an http://…. link that enables inputing the form, in fullscreen mode or inside an iframe (= compose a document).

You get a link to show the data (= open a view). Another link enables you to shwo graphs about the data.

And you get this for each form in the application.

Armed with this, you can integrate that data into whichever website you are working on to give it data handling capabilities.

Lego pieces if you prefer.

To me this is the xPages we ought to have had back in 2010. But then again, it was another decade, and now we are in our new time-space and not the old one.

Now, the other issue I had was that as I had create a form before importing data from a spreadsheet, once I wanted to do it, it did not work.
VOLT cannot match the columns to existing fields just like that. So what you have to do is input on the first line of each column the variable name of each field.

Makes sense, but when you’ve tested creating apps by importing spreadsheets and letting VOLT create the forms, it needs to be said.

And these imports onto an existing dataset or for the first time are possible from the ‘Show data’ function where for each form there is a tab in which the view is shown and from which you may import.

Well, as my grandfather used to say : if you explain things to me for a long time, I understand quickly….

Guess that now my VOLT light is turned ON !

Economy National PL

Premier League casino – who will pay for the losses

by Christophe Jost0 comments

An interesting comment from Mike T. this morning on Macquarie, the australian bank who financed PL clubs growth got me thinking about the economics of the PL.

Their chances (and those of the other lenders against upcoming revenue) to recover their money seems slim. And now even the governement says the games should be broadcast to all, which will dent the whole revenue model more.
Now broadcasters seem to be arguing that because games don’t ake place at set times days and times, they need not pay.
o they may move any game around whenever they wish, yet force majeure does not apply to them.
Just think about the underlying logic. All fans are starved for games. They won’t be able to go see the games. Do you expect they’ll tune in or not ?
So maybe advertising revenue may end up higher as more spectators are expected, so broadcasters may get some of their revenue after all ?
I can bet you the restart of the Bundesliga will be an event as watched as the kickoff to a World Cup.

So I guess they are just looking for a way out of paying. One wonders how come all the MBA’s and high priced lawyers of the Premier League, the richest in the world, did not include some force majeure clause….but this is another story. My opinion is that the Premier League is riddled with incompetence, within and around it : all of football in England is a play ground of incompetent people.

To me, some of these clubs or their owners have wanted to play poker or roulette. Or probably most of them
Some came to the table with a cartload of money and with wealth that guarantees they won’d have to leave the PL asino anytime soon.
Others wanted to join the club at all costs and set up a venture to do just that. Suffice to look at the owners of PL and Championship clubs to see that.
And most bet way above their means. So, now they’ll have to leave the table. And the clubs will tumble into lower leagues or go bankrupt.
I have no problem with a viable (and correctly run) company getting governement help. But these casino players, well, the taxpaying citizen does not have to be asked to finance their seat at the table.
Some billionnaire does not have the means or does not want to keep on spending on his club ? Tough luck them. He sells it, or goes bankrupt and faces all consequences.
And if the finances were not well managed, too much risk taken, well the guys who signed need to pay for their errors as any small business owner has to do.Laws ought to apply to all.
And the last time I checked, the Premier League is in no way systemic, is it ?

Sure, the players, employees will have a problem. But this happens when any company goes bankrupt and we don’t see much of a report in the press about them, do we ?
Personnaly, I’d be more worried about the staff, their wages are ‘normal’, they have the most to lose. Players ? Well, they took on the career, they chose the clubs they play for, they earned generally way more money then any of us, so in no way are they worse off.
In the end, it ought to be a survival of the fittest situation

And if the PL ends up with 10 teams ? Well they’ll play each other 4 times in a season and over the ensuing years, some Championship teams may come up based on finances and results. Would broadcasters be against showing Liverpool- United 4 times a year ? I don’t believe so.

As for broadcasters losses, well, tough luck guys. You are the ones who accepted to pay more, who took risks, who have the university degrees present on the management floor of your corporate buildings, who hire the expensive lawyers and consultants. Sue them and leave us alone. Why should we care at all, after all the examples of you not respecting the fan in the stadium and the paying subscriber ?

In a time when a recession is starting that looks like it will hurt many, when the health system of the country is in dire straits, any idea of the governement coming out to save casino players sounds obscene to me. Privatising profit and mutualising losses accross the country is not acceptable. Banks did get away with it, arguing they were ‘systemic relevant’. I can’t think how the Premier League or the FA would be classified in the systemic relevant category.

One solution out of this mess may be to transfer all clubs who go bust into some ‘Bad club fund’.
Said fund would pay the ‘little people’ owed by the club and look for buyers.
Anyone wanting to ‘buy’ the club would have, in return for use of the ground, the brand, the name, etc. to repay the fund for a number of years, covering what was owed and interest.
Who knows, maybe the clubs’ own fans may be interested in crowdsourcing a restart-
This way, there is no need to come up with hundreds of millions in one shot, but with a plan that makes sense, a competent management team and a vision.
The funds that would be invested would be vetted so as to avoid mafia or autocratic like takeovers.

But then again, such a scenario would need a will to solve the problem and competent people preparing for it and actually running it. Which I don’t think the PL nor the FA has shown as having available.

Just an idea, but why would it not be possible to apply to football recipes that worked for another casino like industry : the banking system ?

However, at some point, survival of the fittest still must apply, and frankly, I do hope it will.

Tech Volt

Switching Domino Volt ON

by Christophe Jost0 comments

VoltTrace

Switching Domino Volt ON

Coming out of Engage 2020 in Arnheim, I was all excited at the thought of getting started with Domino Volt. Yet the virus disruption we are under just wreaked havoc into all my plans. And when I wanted to get going, I discovered that the beta download was not possible anymore and the normal download not possible yet…. tough luck…yet so frustrating as the confinment was giving me at least 3 hours of extra time per day – no metro, bus, train, plane, car to take anymore.

So I contacted Begoña Sanchez, the HCL Client Advocate Manager and she got the issue solved in a few days with the help of her colleagues. I must say I had written off the possibility as large companies with their procedures often have no way to handle an outlier who was not even able to manage the March 31st deadline… And, again, HCL surprised me and the outlier I am was offered a no-fuss practical solution. Many thanks and bravo.

So, as I am often working off-line, I installed a V11 Domino server on my Thinkpad T590 with 64 GB RAM and 1 TB SSD, which is to say a nice workhorse. I then proceeded to install Domino Volt. Some configuration stuff later, I was in Volt working on my first application.

Except I could not save anything….so I started searching, told myself I ought have installed an https connexion on my server, did it, no change.

Anyways at some point logic thinking came back, I de-installed all and started from scratch. With a slight change…. going through the install procedure that came with the file step by step. 10 minutes later all was working.

Which just shows that we till can be arrogant and stupid enough after more then 30 years and not read the install instructions fully. And that the install documents HCL produced are detailed enough – and correct – to enable someone like me to et the job done….. let’s say it is a read-pushbutton installation…. ;=)

Working on my first application, I went back to the handbook I got at Engage 2020 and quickly got my first prototype up and running. I still like the concept, the product, the potential, the promise. So I’ll keep going with it and keep posting about it.

One thing I found out today – and search a solution for now – is an unpractical way it works. I found out that unless you do not save the application regularly, you risk overstepping the time-out if you answer a phone or read an email and it takes longer : you get locked out. And after re-logging in, all your work is lost since the last save. Now that is bad news. I mean, sure, I am used to saving, but then, sometimes stuff happens and your fingers are not on the keyboard and your concentration somewhere else. That something like that can happen ought to be avoided on Volt side. I’d expect at least an autosave or a parameter disabling a timeout.

So for now I’ll keep trying stuff out and will report at a later time on what I discover.

Tech Volt

High Energy with Domino Volt

by Christophe Jost0 comments

HCL - Domino Volt

High Energy with Domino Volt

After having been able to attend an training session on Domino Volt at Engage 2020, I was really looking forward to get started with it and see how it would fit into the HCL Domino/Notes strategy.

Today’s webinar, I must say, pleasently surprised me. Not that I was expecting a deception, but HCL is steady on course and keeping on doing what they promise : listen to partners and customers, respect their deadlines and give us products that can energize our businesses.

Lets see these 3 points

Listening

At the on hands training seminar (and later during beta), many suggestions were made. Marty Lechleider, the Domino Volt product manager was there, showing us how it works, listening to ideas, discussing use cases.

By the way, which other large software publisher enables you to have a product manager actually teach you the product ? And spend quality time to actually have a real dialogue ?

I keep being impressed how the HCL developpers are available to all of us, really ‘recording’ what we discuss and how often I find those ideas, remarks, criticisms having had an impact in the product

Deadlines

After more then a decade of traversing a desert in terms of product evolution, it needs adapting (and requires investment in time…) to get regular new versions, to follow-up on betas.

However, that is a change I am more then happy to adapt to !

Energizing our business

How Domino Volt will impact our business is still something I am not completely sure of. However, its ease of use, the total integration within the Domino/Notes structure and the totally reasonable cost mean we have new options available.

These new options mean we will be able to offer more services at a better price and be able to compete better.

And, if you look back, this is the first ‘new’ product in the Domino/Notes offering since what ? xPages more then a decade ago ?

We can start presenting a new alternative to google forms and Microsoft forms which to me seem to do some stuff Domino Volt does, but the way I see it, Domino Volt goes much further.

Again, integration, security and hybrid data model single it out.

We can now tell a story about a new product, not face questions about how old Domino/Notes is perceived to be.

As for our business and how Domino Volt will impact it ? Here are my thoughts

Registration forms for our customers’ websites.

Seing how easy it is to get a Volt form ready and how comfortable it is to get the data straight into a Notes database, I can predict that we’ll be replacing all registration forms for our customers on their websites with a Volt registration form.

No more transfers from WordPress or whatever other CMS they are using. At worst an ifram opening the form, and the issue is settled.

Agents on the domino server will route whatever process/communications need be. We can have full integration without the complex overhead of xPages.

Add-ons

Domino Volt will enable us to develop some addons based on customer ideas without them becoming too expensive for the customer. Quite often these small addons translate in big savings, but development costs can quickly rise.

With Domino Volt, we can keep that in check, make our maintenance easier and the customers happy

Extranet functions

There again, getting extranet functions online for a customer will be much easier and affordable, even if these functions are specific.

Such features are often deemed to complex and expensive by SMBs, and with Domino Volt I believe we’ll be able to convince many more to go ahead and reap the benefits of better productivity and easier backoffice administration.

On-boarding new developpers

Domino Volt’s modern interface and concept will make it very easy to get new developpers to work in Domino/Notes. The steep learning curve has just got flatter and it opens the way to important savings when getting new personnel up and running on Domino/Notes.

I’ll leave it at that. I’m looking forward to start developping production applications with Domino Volt and integrate them into our own eco-system.

I am sure that there are many more ways Domino/Volt can impact our business…I’ll be happy to read your thoughts and get new ideas. Just feel free to comment !

Take care all of you and stay safe

Arsenal Gunners Non classé Opinion

This is the end, my Arsenal friend, this is the end

by Christophe Jost0 comments

The fallout of the pandemic is far from clear, we have no idea how bad it will be, yet there are some things that will change forever. Like there was a before and after 9/11, or a before and after Bosman. Football will never be the same.

Untold appears to be the only media outlet in the UK actually thinking about football.  Thinking is free – so we can do that, access to Untold is free.   No subscriptions or anything like that.  Thinking means not parroting other people’s comments, not day-dreaming, not taking your readers for idiots.

And so we have started to think about what the world of football is going to look like, as our articles from the past few weeks have shown.

Now, as you are aware after reading our reports, every European league is handling the crisis differently. And if we are to believe what is published about the PL, well it just seems like the PL is doing the opposite of everyone else: the PL is not handling it at all.

Which when you consider the utter magnitude of competence in management the PL and the FA are supposed to have, is not surprising. Maybe someone told them that doing nothing was less dangerous than even thinking about doing something?

Then again, that someone would have been right when one considers the strings of repeated successes the management of the biggest football league in the world and its Football Association has scored since it started. If you are not aware of them, here is a short list:

  • Failed World Cup bid which cost a fortune to put in and got two votes
  • Charity Shield, shut down because it broke basic UK charity law
  • Child abuse scandals across multiple clubs, still mostly unresolved
  • PGMOL: utterly secret, utterly different from the rest of Europe
  • Wembley Stadium, over budget
  • Manager who lasted one match before promising to fake sheikhs to break the law

Shall we stop here? And on the player side, their union is very efficient in paying its manager royally, which I guess from his point of view makes a lot of sense. As for competence, well, how long has this crisis been going on and what have we heard from the players’ union? My advice to every player: run from it and get together with your teammates to negotiate.

Now, when you prepare yourself for a new home, a new job, a new life, you try to imagine all elements of it.  You plan. You get ready.

So, let us look at the different elements of the landscape that may appear before us in a few months.

Money

Football for the past few decades has been burning its basic fuel without end. Living from hand to mouth (except Bayern Munich and Arsenal during the Wenger years and maybe a few other rare clubs). Like a coke addict waiting for the next snort. The merry-go-round organised around two transfer windows animated and organised by agents interested in taking money from each side and from multiplying transactions, as the rest watch like rabbits, doing what rabbits do.

The bubble appeared in full daylight when it became clear that some clubs were actually borrowing on future revenue. Untold wrote about it, commented it; a lone voice in the desert.

Money comes from several sources, primarily… matchday revenue, licencing, player transactions and finally TV revenue. Over the years, TV revenue has grown so wildly out of proportion that most of the 20 PL clubs appear in the list of 40 richest clubs in the world.

That relatively easy money has perverted the whole economics of football in Europe. A few clubs in each league, always present in the CL, earn 30 or 40 millions more than other clubs in their national league, year after year. This widens the gap inexorably to a point where in most European leagues, the championship has turned into a competition between two or maybe three clubs.  In August 2018 Untold predicted who would win the League in six different countries at the end of that season, and got every one of them right.  Not because we were clever but because it was so blindingly obvious.

Basically, one can compare TV money to matchday revenue. Broadcasters are selling season tickets for games and are earning some money from advertising. Virtual stadia, this is what it is.

Not only has football become dependent on TV money, TV has become dependent on football. In Germany, if Sky were to not get the next TV contract, there is talk the company might even collapse, as the subscriber loss would be so massive. So some TV broadcasters are totally dependent on games being available in their drive to get subscribers.

Gambling

Betting is a big financier of football. So much that clubs belong to betting companies, stadia have their names, and shirts carry their logos. My bet? Betting is done. The industry is dying and no one will come to its aid. At some point it will revive because people love to bet…but for now, unless they take bets on which clubs go bust first, or which player goes back to college first to learn a new trade, they have no ‘material’ anymore.

Which in turn means the PL loses, just from this industry, hundreds of millions in revenue streams across the PL and Championship.

Players

Interestingly, in Europe, there is no professional player association that really wields influence as is the case in US sports. Or in tennis. In the US, the NFL owners have to renegotiate the base conditions with the players’ union and sometimes strikes do happen.  Same thing in basketball, baseball or ice hockey. In this most capitalist of countries, unions are an important element, and, as a consequence, player revenue and protection are optimised.

In Europe, it is each player for himself. Can’t say I’ve read much about their activities and victories for the players they represent. Which, I think, is just fine for the owners and clubs. Better to have the players as individuals then as a group backed by a powerful union. Interestingly, in this continent where social advances started, the players are in a rat race. Just the opposite situation from that in America.

Some players are helping actively, but what do we know? The press does not do its job and reports on just a few individuals, whereas I am sure there are many more players adopting a humane vision. Or I ought to say I hope….

Broadcasters

The broadcasters used to be TV stations. Then came satellite/cable TV providers, and finally streaming services.

Each new actor brought more money to the table because their capacity to reach spectators was bigger than the predecessor.

So audiences widened, revenue skyrocketed and along with it, everything else went up: player salaries, agent commissions, marketing revenue, ticket prices, number of games, squad sizes, betting activity.

Broadcasters find themselves in the situation of a restaurant that has already sold out its next 365 evenings, and whose dining hall has just been condemned as unfit for purpose by health authorities. No meals to serve, a full staff to pay and customers wanting a refund.

And I am not even starting to talk about Bein. These guys are in deep trouble, even if they have deep oil wells.  But their oil has just dipped so much that in the course of three months, it has lost two-thirds of its value (from above $60/barrel to barely above $20 a barrel).

Bein pretty much took over every sport available on all continents to feed it’s satellite channels. It sure has movies etc, but sports is their calling card. And now they’ve got no content anymore, or to be precise, they are losing content on a daily basis, from east to west as the pandemic closes down one country after the other.

Sure, they have deep pockets. As have Emirates… but how deep… ?

Fans

I am making a distinction here: fans are those coming to the game for the love of the game and the passion of the club. Not spectators coming to see a show.

Fans were the first spectators. And with each new broadcasting evolution, they become a smaller proportion of spectators and of revenue. And in the end, many feel they are just being robbed of their time, money and intelligence.

Organisations in England

There was a time when sports bodies were something one could look to. Just read the piece on the participation of the UK at the Moscow games that was on the Guadian the other day.

Yet, with the staggering amounts of money football was starting to generate, football organisations became a sort of laundromat for ambition, greed and corruption. As in all things human, the more money, the more greed, hubris and self-serving. The consequence is always a loss of competence, with incompetence encroaching all levels of an organisation. Just to make the point, even Germany has had its share of that, with the attribution of the WC 2006 being played out in front of the courts because of corruption.

Yet, clearly, England, the FA and the PL in that regard, are probably world leaders not at corruption but at incompetence. So incompetent they are not even corrupt. Just to make the point, I’ll repeat the shortlist: failed World Cup bid, Charity Shield, England managers, kids abuse, PGMOL, Wembley stadium, the one game manager….

These bodies however are negotiating with broadcasters for huge amounts of money. Sure they represent the clubs or federations, but then, when all the world wants to see games, it ain’t complicated to sell. Now that the money-flow has stopped, it is going to be a totally different story.

Press

That which calls itself the press is basically the same body that reports on royals (and sometimes on politics), using the same tactics, the same manipulative methods and showing no respect for its readers.

Reading them, one wonders how come scandals were unearthed in England these past 25 years. The sheer lack of curiosity, of critical sense, of actual fact-based reporting is AWOL.  Where are the investigative pieces of journalism about football? Mainstream is fantasy reporting. These writer ought not to have a press card but a fantasy press card.

Can you imagine that there has been NO story on how players in the PL are dealing with the pandemic? I mean with some interviews across the teams and the country, with an interview of the player union boss? I mean, the PLAYERS, you know, those guys running after what is called a football on a grass surface…. Nothing serious.

Clubs and their social anchoring

Just reading what Spurs are doing makes one sick. Just get the taxpayer to pay the salaries of ground zero victims – the employees. Or when Liverpool pretty much did the same and had the utter nerve to say they were sending the stewards to help stores for free.

Compared to the response of many clubs in Germany, Italy, Spain, this is just ridiculous. On the other hand it just shows the incredible disconnect between the clubs and their environment. Some smaller clubs are doing something. The big ones are just coronawashing their ridiculous gestures.

The thing is, fans are not stupid and see the damage to their city, to their local businesses. Will they have any reason to support any bailout or plea for help?

UEFA and FIFA

Both these organisations are in deep deep trouble. The gravy train has just stopped and will not resume its course. Their independence, bought by money, has disappeared and governments will not behave according to their priorities.

Their survival may not be at stake, they’ll still be useful in the future, but their revenue stream has stopped, their usefulness in the crisis is nil, and, worst of all, as an ‘actor’ helping societies they have failed miserably and are useless.

Their power lies with the national federations and these are now fighting for their own survival so not much of a collaborative effort possible there.

Add to that, in FIFA’s case, that money was the way to make sure things went according to plan. And money has just run out. And that corruption perverted the whole system. At some points even the lawyers protecting them will stop doing it for lack of money.

Covid 19

And this bug has to be mentioned. We know so little of it. One positive thing, it seems not to evolve very much if I believe reports. So that stability will make it easier to get a vaccine developed. But until then, it is a threat to health systems, it can spread like the plague and most probably will stay around for a while.

And this disruption in sports leads to total annihilation. Even if all PL players, coaches, medics, and other supporting staff were healthy on day 1 of its start, if just one person in a few thousand tests positive, that team, the last team they played in the past 2 weeks, and the teams they themselves played…well I’ll stop there. It is at present from a epidemics point of view impossible to predict that playing even behind closed doors, even if all players were to live apart from the world along with supporting staff.

Unless all players are shipped to Antarctica and stay there to play indoors for the whole of next season, there will be no next season… or we find a vaccine.

Untold Arsenal

For more then a decade, Untold has been talking of all the subjects that the ‘Kommentariat’ are considering as off-side. And has repeatedly predicted events before the public or even actors were aware of them (FIFA arrests in Switzerland to state just one). It has invented vocabulary and concepts that ended up being adopted (yet without any credits…) by the so called press: rotational fouling, reffymandering, to name but two.

For weeks now, we have kept on giving you a perspective no other football outlet has given. But then, it is the thing we love to do. And it is for free.

On the horizon, seen from the beach, there is this tsunami wave that is approaching. It is the result of an eruption. The first fallout saw all games cancelled, stadia closed and football brought to a standstill. Seismometers are registering tremors, a storm is brewing and invaders are at the door. This is pretty much what is hitting the world of football now. Remember Pompeï ?

Now, you may say we are being pessimistic, we are painting the devil on the wall or are scaring the living daylights out of our readers… well the fact is that any politician who belittled this pandemic has blood on his hand. That has gone from bad to worse. That pretty much half of humanity is on some form of lockdown and that it will even get worse.

These are facts we can read all over the world. Not some kind of politico thriller written by Steven King.

Yet somehow, we hope that someday soon, we’ll be watching the opening game of the next season, will be cheering for our team, will want to share the moment with kids, friends, fathers.

Nature is showing us fascinating examples of resilience. We humans have resilience as well. Inventions will come, methods will be devised. Efforts will be done together or not. But we believe that this pandemic will come to pass and our world will enter an new age.

It will be up to each of us to make sure this new age is better than the one which we see dying in front of our eyes.

We hope that in terms of football, of reporting, you will have a better understanding of what has been going on all these years and will want to be better informed. And that you won’t accept to be taken for idiots anymore.

Those were the days my friend…we thought they’d never end…

Legal Reffymandering

Reffymandering: the new football word to describe the game in the third decade

by Christophe Jost0 comments

What is in a word?

Quite a lot sometimes if it allows us to express something complex in a simple way.

The word gerrymander (originally written Gerry-mander) was invented by a writer on the Boston Gazette in 1812. It was used when the electoral boundaries in Massachusetts were redrawn to help the re-election of members of Governor Elbridge Gerry’s party.

So what does it mean when we change it to refer to refereeing in football?

Basically, it is a newly created word (thanks to our European correspondent Christophe Jost) referring to the manipulation of football matches by referees or a refereeing organisation, either to promote the interests of some clubs to the detriment of others, or to focus more power upon themselves and make it ever harder for others to challenge that power base.

And it turns out to be very handy to have this word, as opposed to the traditional phrase “match fixing” for a number of reasons.

First, match fixing can be undertaken by players who are persuaded through financial rewards not to put 100% effort into winning a game. Indeed this tactic might happen quite openly when a club just needs a draw to avoid relegation at the end of the season. In such a case the players will forego the normal desire to win in order to guarantee the one point they need. However this tactic would not in itself be against any rules providing only one of the two teams is engaged in this.

However “reffymandering” exposes the power of the referee or indeed a set of referees both to act against one team and in favour of another, and to reinforce its own absolute control over a league.

Second, it has traditionally been imagined that bias by a referee would be easy to spot – and ultimately easy to expose – because the actions of the referee can come under close scrutiny by the media. But this in itself can be overcome where a number of other factors found within the concept of reffymandering are brought into play. These factors include…

First, a general feeling that “this simply doesn’t happen,” because no one is talking about it.  Thus the reffymandering organisation needs very close liaison with a compliant media – a liaison that is so strong the media can be induced not even to discuss even the possibility of match fixing by referees

Second, where the effect is hidden through Type III match fixing in which it is the matches of rival clubs that are affected by dubious refereeing practice, rather than the club which benefits from the match fixing.

Third, where the match fixing is spread across a season, so that we have to look quite deeply at the data to see it.   This is achieved by not making all the relevant data available on one place, so that compliant journalists anxious to knock out a quick article, miss the connection, or don’t do the maths.  And it is aided by the media having the view that “fans are not interested in the minutia of statistics.”

To explore this third element a little further we can look (as we have done recently) at the “cards per game” data between clubs and comparing these figures with the number of fouls.   Although this is not desperately complex, the figures become easy to hide in England where there is a long term tradition of match commentators suggesting that maths is not something they understand, nor that the average fan is interested in or can understand.  (Remember BT Sport’s approach to the Emirates cup where the commentators claimed the award of a point for a goal as well as three for a win and one for a draw, made it impossible for them to work out who had won the trophy).

So at the moment of writing (and to take one simple example), we have a situation where Leicester get 1.05 yellow cards per game while Arsenal get 2.57 cards per game.  That seems a huge difference, and multiplied across all 38 league games in a season means many more Arsenal players than Leicester players will be suspended, and Arsenal will play many more minutes with players being extra careful in tackles etc because they are already on one yellow card.

But in order to see the effect fully, a second set of data has to be introduced: how many fouls the club has committed.  Data that is required because one would expect in broad terms a club that gets a lot of yellow cards might be expected to be committing the most fouls.

Interestingly the Premier League figures give us loads of data but not that particular factor.  You can find the most fouls committed by a player on the official site, but not fouls committed per team – which is rather odd.  For that data we have to go to the independent Footchart site.

So when data which compares fouls per team and yellow cards per team is hidden away, while so much other data is made available by the authorities, one starts to wonder.  It is no proof of anything underhand going on, but it is a little strange.

Then when virtually no one from the media seems to want to pick up this story and consider it, one wonders a little more.  And when one does the analysis and finds a very odd disparity that shows that four of the London teams are getting far more fouls given against them than others, and there are no London referees in the League, one wonders further.  Still no proof, but it is suspicious.

Add to that the fact that the referees’ organisation is so highly secretive that referees are forbidden from talking to the media, and indeed the organisation goes so far as to offer financial inducements to its referees not to talk to the media even after retirement, and we have further reason to be concerned.  Throw in the fact that it would be very easy to reduce suspicion about referees if no referee was ever allowed to take control of a game involving the same team more than twice in a season – but this is NOT done, and suspicion grows.  (And with this issue this can hardly be a question of cost, given the incredible profits that Premier League football makes).

And finally add in the fact that the mass media – even the intellectual liberal end of it – won’t touch this topic at all, and that makes the case that Reffymandering might well exist.  It is not proof, it is a suggestion that something odd is going on and needs investigating.

Indeed so many issues are raised here that one gigantic question comes to the fore: why on earth is none of this being examined by the media?   Of course, I don’t know but when faced with something I can’t explain I do try and use the scientific training I had in my student years to look for viable explanations.

One explanation is that media editors and publishers believe that the public are too stupid to be able to understand how such figures can arise legitimately and so don’t raise the issue.   Another is that PGMO has, as part of its contract, an agreement that the fairness of referees must never be questioned.   Another is that the media think that football fans wouldn’t be interested.  Which one? We can only gather information and take an informed view.

Highlighting these figures has come about through the work of people like “Nitram” and Christophe Jost who with many others kindly support the work of Untold Arsenal by providing information and undertaking research.  My position having received this data is that it doesn’t prove match fixing is going on – but it is suspicious (to me at least) that no one in the media ever takes up this issue.  Just as they ignored the fact that Uefa has admitted it does not have the resources to deal with the rise of match fixing.

That’s what makes me think Reffymandering probably exists.  It is the existence of all this data, and no serious discussion.  By which I don’t mean a 3 minute piece interviewing “an expert” on BBC Radio 5, followed by 3 minutes with the BBC’s football correspondent saying no, it is all a bit “conspiracy theory”. I mean something much more in-depth.  But the fact that we don’t even get the two sets of three minutes shows just how deeply hidden this topic is.

Reffymandering.  It’s a funny word.   But then it’s a funny ol’ game.